


Dreams, Fears, Jam

by Kanekalon



Series: Telanadas (Nothing is inevitable) [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 05:02:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18804241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanekalon/pseuds/Kanekalon
Summary: Solas examines the still unconscious survivor of the Temple of Sacred Ashes: a Dalish mage that manages, in a few small ways, to surprise him.





	Dreams, Fears, Jam

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hope you enjoy this one-sided introduction of a Dalish witch and Solas's complicated relationship. 
> 
> -Kanekalon

Solas slipped into the prisoner’s cell at dim twilight and for once, the Templar guards gave him no trouble. He brought the prisoner something to eat, though he was looking forward to helping himself to the bread and jam when she didn’t wake. He’d helped himself to her breakfasts for the last few days, and he’d learned that he had a real taste for blackberries.

The prisoner lay on her back on the narrow cell bed, a rough blanket pulled to her shoulders, face screwed as if she were having a nightmare. Her skin was dark copper and dewy with sweat; Solas set down the food and went to pour water into her washing bowl, soaking and wringing out the rag before laying it on her hot forehead. She had a face full of distinctive features -- high, protruding cheekbones, a wide forehead, deep-set eyes. She had a shocking pair of bushy eyebrows that, along with her large ears and low fuzz of hair, put him a bit in mid of a bat. Her vallaslin extended well past her hairline: she was a proud daughter of Dirthamen, which is what he’d heard one of the guards say, and which made the backs of his ears twinge. Beneath the vallaslin -- or over it, he couldn’t tell exactly when she’d been injured -- were so many scars curving over her scalp, her high cheekbones, her wide, prominent nose. They were long-healed but unavoidable, and so the new bruises and scrapes she’d sustained in explosion seemed like they’d found a suitable home on her face. There was a lot of pain there, and Solas found himself wondering if there’d been suffering in equal measure.

 _But does that really matter?_ He shook the feeling off as he set the rag aside to properly examine her, lifting his chin slightly to encourage the cell's lit sconce to brighten. To his mild pleasure, he heard one of the guards curse and mutter about "fucking mages." But back to the mysterious prisoner: he’d stabilized her with healing magic that seemed to be holding well, though Solas still dutifully checked her pulse. Her skin, for any suggestion that the mark was spreading beneath the surface. The rhythm of her mana against that of her heartbeat, just to make sure it wasn’t killing her any quicker than he’d already determined.

Indeed, she was still dying at that slow yet insistent pace. They had some time -- _he_ had time to determine if the Mark could be salvaged in the event of her premature death. As it stood, he wasn't confident about it. He'd prefer it if she pulled through.

Solas continued his observations as he retreated to the cell's only chair. He’d barely settled in the hard seat before slumped in it, falling asleep at will and dipping into her dreams. It had to be done quickly; Seeker Pentaghast knew of his Dreaming but the guards did not, and he'd like to keep it that way. Dreamers were a rare and dangerous thing and anything so rare and dangerous among Andraste's sheep was only a frightened leap away from being declared blood magic. Solas believed in Seeker Pentaghast's word that she would protect him - so long as he was useful to the cause - but he didn't expect she could keep her word as well when she wasn't around. He had no desire to die so soon; there was so much to do. 

The prisoner’s dreamscape was cool-toned, softly dark, and moderately unsettling -- Solas found he enjoyed slipping into it more than most dreamscapes of those still living. She’d been dreaming the same dream since he’d started checking in on her. She was with other Dalish mages, all marked in the face, all naked beneath an overcast night sky in a deep wood. While they all started the night with bare feet on the ground, they eventually began rising into the air at various intervals. They were less like birds and more like leaves, swept up at the will of the breeze and it made the beginning of their ascents a bit silly-looking, a bit inelegant. It almost looked like they were treading the air like water. Solas watched the scene closely every time, enraptured. He didn’t know how to float, or he’d forgotten. Some things were still hazy.

Once his prisoner - he couldn’t find her name anywhere in her own head, which irritated him - found her bearings, she bloomed, arching backwards like a sculpted figure, her wiry body half concealed by shadow and half illuminated by the slips of moonlight that made it down through the fog and canopy. Solas admired how she held the sharp arch, the serenity on her face mixed with the severity of her features. She was beautifully severe, he decided. Like a fine arrowhead.

Solas didn't tire of this dream, but he only stayed long enough make sure nothing lurked in the many shadows of her dreamscape. Aside from concealing his nature from the guards, well, the light fell on her body in such blatant revelations that his admiration would warm into something else if he let it go too long. He would not let it go too long: it was inappropriate in her present state, irrelevant to their current situation, and below his own well-honed restraint. Once he was certain all was well, he closed the door of her dreams, patrolled quickly for any demons he might have drawn, and then woke himself up. Decided to help himself to some jam.

The blackberry jam was so good he thought he’d be content just to scoop it out and eat it off his fingers. It was nice to sit and eat in silence, even if he was in a cold, damp Chantry dungeon -- the world outside was frantically loud and riddled with anxious energy both mundane and magical. The Breach was a vicious scourge of glowing green couched in the sky, demons screamed and tore soldiers apart gleefully as they burst in from the Fade, and the Andrastian world had exploded with the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Once he stepped out of that door he’d be accosted by the shrill, sustained and seemingly endless scream that had been every waking moment since the Temple’s demise. He hadn’t seen quite so much disaster since...well, since --

The prisoner sputtered, sitting upright in bed so quickly that Solas nearly dropped the jam jar before setting it down and going to her. She was shaking violently, slicked in sweat again, got in the way of catching her own breath as she hyperventilated. Her magic spiked and the air crackled; Solas swore he saw a twinge of lightning spark above her head. She didn’t seem to be casting it -- she didn’t seem like she knew quite what was happening yet. Her eyes tracked nothing; she hardly noticed that he’d sat on the side of the bed. Firmly but gently, he took her by the shoulders and eased her onto her her back. He looked over his shoulder to see if the guards had noticed; they'd moved out of sight, though he suspected not for long.

“Breathe,” he said. “Just take one big deep breath, and then another.” For a moment she seemed to hear him. Her body relaxed, but then something must have snapped in her and she thrashed up at him, hissing, fighting against his grip. She was strong, but Solas was stronger, heavier, and without the disadvantage of being in shock and on his back.

“Stay down,” he said sternly, grabbing her wrists and crossing them over her chest when she tried to claw at him with fingers snapping lighting. He snuffed her out with cold magic, and then cast a heavy layer of healing magic over her to ease anything she might have jolted in her frenzy. She had a split in her lip that was only lightly healed, open and bleeding again, and he could only imagine the bruised muscles and ligaments she’d disrupted. When she was done flailing, she was going to be in a lot of pain. “You’ve had an extraordinary shock and I'm afraid it's not quite over yet.”

She was wild-eyed, nostrils flaring and snarling so that she really did look like a bat. She had eyes the color of Orlesian champagne that seemed to glow even in the light. They didn’t help her look any less deranged, any less like a fearful creature in torch light. Solas shook her, just a little, to try and focus her attention.

“What’s your name?” he asked. She didn’t seem to hear him anymore, eyes darting frantically at everything but his face, her heart still racing. She trembled with such force that Solas wondered if he should call the proper medic. The Mark was concealed, but he could see the green light bleed around the edges the longer she panicked.

Hmm. He really needed to calm her down, quickly. He could put her out, but he wanted information. At the very least, her name.

 _“Ma halani_ ,” she muttered in a voice full of gravel. “ _Ma halani_." She repeated it, quickly and quietly, as if she was asking the shadows and not him. As if she were praying.

“ _Ir halani ma_ ,” he replied gently. “ _Tel'enfenim. Ma’dar dareth, ar avaren._ I swear it.” It was the truth, despite the irony of him saying it while he treated her in grimy cell.

The Mark’s light caught her eye; she looked down at her hands crossed over her chest. Solas watched as the crackling green seemed to respond to her attention, frowning. That was curious. It confirmed his early suspicion that they wouldn’t simply be able to cut off her hand and save the Mark. It seemed reflexive, like an additional body part. Not simply a tool.

Troubling. Troublesome.

The prisoner sobered as she seemed to put things together in her mind. She stopped trembling despite Solas still pinning her down. Then she looked directly at him. Solas felt goosebumps on the back of his neck. 

“I don’t think I am,” she whispered. "Safe." Then, she fainted. The Mark dimmed immediately.

Solas held her down for a few moments longer to make sure she was out, then fell back into his chair with a deep sigh. She was right. Seeker Pentaghast and the spymaster already weren’t keen on her, and her life did indeed depend on whether they believed in her innocence. It depended on them nearly as much as it did the natured of the magic in her hand. The Mark seemed stable enough, but it was still an immeasurable piece of magic forced onto a body that shouldn’t have been able to take it. She was a mage but she was a Dalish mage, and skies only knew how stunted the Dalish had become over the ages. Culling their clans to assuage Andrastian fear. Holding tight to superstition and calling it preservation. Floating in the forest -- if that dream had any truth to it -- didn’t change the fact that Solas didn’t expect much from her magically. Surviving was impressive, but not necessarily because of her own prowess.

 _But then, my judgement hasn’t always proved trustworthy,_  he reminded himself. Chided himself really; he was the only one who could.  _And I must learn from my mistakes, even if no one else will._

Solas figured that the prisoner would be out for another few hours, but she wouldn’t stay that way for much longer than that. She wasn’t going to die at any rate, at least not now. He would inform the Seeker of what he thought concerned both her and the spymaster, of course. But he wasn’t in a hurry to bombard the prisoner with their...intensity. If he didn't know much else he knew at least that she was innocent. But then, it wasn’t his god-on-earth that had been killed in the explosion of a most sacred temple, either. The Andrastians were even sillier than the Dalish, in his mind. So he’d wait a while before he enlightened them. An hour wouldn't change anything, one way or the other. 

Until then, he thought he might eat a piece of the prisoner’s breakfast bread, and all the jam besides.

**Author's Note:**

> We'll meet my girl properly next time. Thanks for reading!
> 
> VOCAB  
> I try to make some grammar sense of the elven words that aren't already given as sentences in the wiki, but honestly not much:
> 
> Ma halani - help me  
> Ir halani ma - I'm helping you  
> Tel'enfenim. Ma'dar dareth, ar avaren - Don't be afraid (never fear). You're safe, I promise.


End file.
